itch.io

Worst slop I've seen today.

"ensure timely delivery of the cargo to experience pure fun and mental stimulation".  Or not.

Somebody should be ashamed but I can't tell where there's a human.

There's really nothing to improve for UX -- it's a simple UI and does its whole job perfectly.  My preference for the first design is strictly a matter of taste.  The  original monochrome line drawings are, well, presumably AI, but decent and quite a different presentation from every other game out there.  Your first draft is a fresh way of presenting its problem.  I think having more colors doesn't improve anything because the colors don't add information.  I don't know whether you play Paradox games but they have lots of under-the-hood complexity that *could* be presented in plain, flat maps, but they junk it up with animated marching soldiers and rippling oceans that make my cpu run MUCH too hot *for no reason*.

I'm someone who likes minimalist presentations.  Your first pass had the decorative frames and stuff... but stopped there!  So nice!  Not raytraced toons pretending to battle!  But I'm also pretty extreme in my minimal direction and there's no reason you need to listen to me.  Make it the way that looks best to you.  That will be the best way.

Well actually I prefer the original.  The main thing though is it doesn't make any difference -- no UX improvement, so why bother?

That's a really good development from the battle test version.  Very promising!

Outstanding!  Best modernist-novel-to-game I've seen.  I can't do platformers at all, but you get the Bundrens.

*Practice*!

Wow -- well that's pretty comprehensive!  I look forward to it.

Pretty nice.  Needs some QOL fixes, like Next Unit; movements are *very* slow.  Economy a little weird -- charging two turns of income to replant mushrooms is very expensive.  More goblin babies than I could use -- be nice to turn off a hatchery for some income.

Okay idea but bugged.  Can't upgrade mineshaft; chests don't go away when you take them; alerts say I've lost gold and I lose wood; alerts say I've lost food and I lose food *income*.

But kind of fatal: all actions succeed.  There is no "play", you just take a bunch of steps.

Good response.  Sorry to be disagreeable.

Why do an exact copy of Dragonsweeper?  Unambitious.

No good.  "Levels" do not vary, goals are often not possible.  Obvious vibe slop.

Oh, and one last thing: Listen to your critics, but not too much.  The main thing is to make things, and that should be the things you want.

Also, sorry for being harsh; I had just played through and was feeling kind of frustrated.  You've got several things right here.  For one, there's a fair number of games on Itch that don't even work -- so you've cleared that hurdle.  Also there are a LOT of games here that are just plain hideous, and you don't have that problem either (the way the girl looks -- pretty! friendly! -- does not really make sense for the scenario but everything else looks fine).

I've been trying to sort out what the problem really is with the logic in this, since good escape puzzles often have you use things in non-normal ways and isn't that illogical?  I think it's really about what a person would do in the situation.  If I woke up in that living room and found a knife in the kitchen I would not think "I'll use this knife to dig in that flowerpot."  I also wouldn't think "I need to boil some water to get out so I should fix this kettle," because at that point in the progress I have no reason to think hot water will be useful.  Instead I'd smash the window with the flowerpot and leave that way; The End.  What you want to do is require lateral thinking; what this game has is all-over-the-place thinking.

Also consider the UX a form of drama.  The table in the corridor is a hotspot -- why?  Only so you can put the glass on it later (for no reason).  That makes the table a character in your drama, but a character that doesn't do anything; it's like having extra people standing around on the stage, blocking the view of the action without contributing to it.

Do a bunch of other escape puzzles; take notes on *every move you make* and think about why you did those things.  Rate how much you like each game and figure out why you feel that way.  The point of these is not to make just a string of kooky actions where you try everything everywhere and eventually something works -- there has to be a reason for it every time.

Good luck!

This game is bad.  Sorry.  What you call "story" is not really a story -- and escape room games mostly don't need a story anyway.  The problem here is that the items don't relate to each other in any logical way and the hotspots don't behave consistently.  If there is a knife on a table I should always be able to pick it up -- but maybe I don't know where to use it; if I search a bookcase once I should get all its clues -- but maybe I can't understand them; if there's a trap door I should be able to open it or it should be locked.  If the girl drugged me to start the story, why didn't she just hang me up in the attic the first time instead of drugging me again?  What's the point of having a basement if the only thing that happens there is passing out again?  Why is one houseplant clickable but not the other?  Why do I not find the sleeping pills in the couch the first time?  Why would I want to dissolve them in hot water and leave that on the table?

Basically every single move in this is arbitrary -- it could be anything.  It seems like you let some LLM design this bundle of interactions and you figured that was good.  Study some other escape rooms and think about how each step makes logical sense -- which isn't always the case: bad escape rooms always have problems with their logic.  This is *all* faulty logic.